Christmas is approaching once again and that means one important thing: staying far the hell away from the apocalyptic scenarios at any store that dares to hold a Black Friday sale this month. Aside from that, it's also time for I-Mockery's annual Christmas Secret Santa event! Every year, registered users from the forum community come together to share in the holiday commercialism by buying and sending each other gifts that range from hilarious to just plain awesome. It's tradition, so whether you're a new member or an old one, you should absolutely join in the fun, so be sure to reply to this thread. 10,000 Volt Ghost is running the event this year, so be sure to read the important rules he'll be posting below BEFORE you reply to this thread and sign-up:

You sign up in this thread by stating that you want to join. The last day to sign up is November 24th. Send 10,000 Volt Ghost a private message with your full mailing address, real name and your forum name/alias. On November 25th, you will receive a PM with the name and address of the person you will be sending your gift to. At this point, you send out your gift before December 7th and get ready to receive a gift of your own! Upon receiving your gift, you must post pictures in this thread to show everyone what you got! It’s not mandatory, but many participants in the past have made a little story out of enjoying their gift(s), so do that if you wanna have extra fun! But at the very least, you need to post photos of what you received. Everyone needs to get pictures of the gifts they received posted by December 22nd.

Everyone has plenty of time to do all of that, so do it!

Special note for those of you who live outside of North America:

You’re more than welcome to participate, but pay special attention to the “how people will be split up” section below.

Rules and Guidelines:
This whole thing is for fun, but there has to be some assurance that everyone will keep up their end of the bargain, so failure to follow the rules and instructions will result in a permanent ban from the forums. Plus, we know Santa pretty well, and he’s assured us that messing up in any way will result in a nice big chunk of coal being rammed up your rectum! :D

Here are some general rules and guidelines everybody should follow:

Spend somewhere between 15-25 bucks (USD) on your gift. This amount does NOT include shipping costs. No one likes a cheapskate, so if this is too much money for you, get a job and join next year instead! Don’t go overboard and get something expensive, but don’t cheap out either. If you want to spend more than 25 bucks, you can, but please understand that you most likely won't receive something of equal monetary value. Then again, that's not what this is all about, so that shouldn't matter to you anyway, Scrooge!

Obey all deadlines. Screwing someone over, especially at Christmas, is a guaranteed ticket to hell! Let’s see if an eternity of torture will help you be punctual!

Before signing up, make sure you have a working camera. If you can’t upload pictures to your computer directly, there are other options such as getting your film developed and put on a CD. Uploading pictures of your gifts is just as important to our Secret Santa event as sending some gifts out is. Remember, if you don't have a camera of your own, your cellphone probably has a working camera and/or you can also buy disposable digital cameras too.

MAKE SURE YOUR ADDRESS IS UP TO DATE AND YOU WILL NOT HAVE ANY TROUBLE RECEIVING PACKAGES! It’s not hard to find your current address, so don’t fuck it up!

Don’t be cheap and make something. If you have to do that, keep the minimum spending amount in mind and please consider sending other purchased stuff along with your creation as well. It's fine to make something in addition to purchasing gifts for your recipient, just try not to only make stuff as it's hard to put a monetary value on that sort of thing

Your mailing address CANNOT be a P.O. Box. No gifts will be sent to P.O. boxes nor will anyone with a P.O box as a mailing address be allowed to participate in the Secret Santa event.

Again If you fail to uphold your end of the deal, you will be permanently banned from the forums. So please, don't be a dick. We want this event to be fun for everybody.

YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO PURCHASE GIFTS FROM DOLLAR STORES. We've had too many people get screwed over by cheap gifts at 99cent / dollar general stores, so please do not purchase gifts from them.

IF YOU’RE A NEW MEMBER (Registered AND active less than a year)

In an effort to cut down on people who might sign-up just to get free shit, new users need to take the following steps to be eligible to join in the fun:

1. Provide a picture of themselves holding up a hand-written sign that says both "I-MOCKERY SECRET SANTA 2013!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" along withtheir message forum name/name in plain view.

2. Post this picture in this thread for all to see.

3. PM 10,000 Volt Ghost, informing him that you are a new member who wants to participate in the secret Santa event. He will then send you a letter with a mailing address.

4. Send a test letter to the mailing address that you were provided with by 10,000 Volt Ghost. The letter needs to include your full name, return mailing address and your name here on the I-Mockery forums.

5. To ensure that you’re eligible to participate, do all of that as quickly as possible!

These steps are necessary to verify that you have a working camera and the motivation to get your ass to a post office.

DEADLINES!!!!

-The last day to SIGN UP is SUNDAY, November 24th (watch this thread because if we have an uneven number, we might accept more)

-The last day for SENDING your gifts out is December 7th (deadline was extended to this new date this year since we were a little late sending out Secret Santa assignments)

-The last day for POSTING PICTURES of the gifts you receive is December 22nd (deadline may be extended since sending out Secret Santa assignments has been delayed a bit this year)

MAILING YOUR PACKAGE:

-You MUST send out your gifts by priority or express shipping methods to ensure that everyone receives their gifts in a timely fashion. Someone will be doing this for you, so please do it for someone else.

-You MUST purchase a tracking number for your package so that you can keep track of it if there are any delays.

-Do NOT send a PM or email to the person who you are sending a gift to in an attempt to let them know that you're their Secret Santa. It's called "Secret" Santa for a reason, people. Half of the fun is people being surprised when they learn who their Secret Santa is!

RECEIVING YOUR PACKAGE:

-Post pictures of all the gifts you receive no later than December 22nd. If you want to be funny with it and make a video or pictorial story or something, that’s great, but just make sure you post it all by the 22nd.

-Take pictures of ALL of your gifts. Half of the fun of this event is seeing recipients enjoying their gifts.

-If you don’t have your package and it’s getting close to the deadline for postings pictures, send a PM to 10,000 Volt Ghost so he can see what the delay is.

HOW PEOPLE WILL BE SPLIT UP:

Everyone who participates will be paired randomly with someone to send their gift to, but if certain conditions are met, some switches might have to be made:

Because this event attracts people from all over the world, special attention will be paid to making sure people won’t have to spend too much on shipping. This doesn’t mean that you’re guaranteed to get someone from the same country as you, but if there are only a couple participants from your part of the world, it’s a possibility. Either way, we will not tolerate complaints from people who refuse to mail packages outside of their country. If you have a problem with this, you shouldn't sign up because there's always a chance you will have to pay a little extra to ship your package out. This season is about giving, so you shouldn't be picky about little things like shipping fees.

Also, Douglas won one of our recent Halloween contests, so I can vouch for him to help speed up the process. Go ahead and add him as a participant. Douglas, I the forum is set so you need to post X number of times before you can send a PM (prevents spambots from annoying our members).

I don't really agree. the item he sent was within the price limit and didnt break any of the posted rules. I just think it sets a bad precedent.

not an issue unless he (snoogans) wants to join of course.

in anycase I hope you get an extra awesome gift this year Thanos.

After reading you take on it, I realized i was wrong and retract my statement. I just felt bad that it was such a disappointing gift. It was great a gag gift but there should have been a legit one with it as as well. No offense to Snoogans who I was paired with last year, I forgot who sent it before commenting.

The fact that I basically got cyber-stalked and had a real photo of my actual face printed on a pillow was just unsettling, to say the least. I can appreciate the sentiment... a little. My dogs still can't look at the pillow without completely losing their shit and flipping out, though.

If you want to read something really funny Ronin, go check out the 2012 Secret Santa thread. So much win!